Mark Steyn @ NRO:
Previously on The Perils of Pauline:
Last year, our plucky heroine, the wholesome apple-cheeked American republic, was trapped in an express elevator hurtling out of control toward the debt ceiling. Would she crash into it? Or would she make some miraculous escape?
Yes! At the very last minute of her white-knuckle thrill ride to her rendezvous with destiny, she was rescued by Congress’s decision to set up . . . a Super Committee! Those who can, do. Those who can’t, form a committee. Those who really can’t, form a Super Committee — and then put John Kerry on it for good measure. The bipartisan Super Committee of Super Friends was supposed to find $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit reduction by last Thanksgiving, or plucky little America would wind up trussed like a turkey and carved up by “automatic sequestration.”
Sequestration sounds like castration, only more so: It would chop off everything in sight. It would be so savage in its dismemberment of poor helpless America that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the course of a decade the sequestration cuts would reduce the federal debt by $153 billion. Sorry, I meant to put on my Dr. Evil voice for that: ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS!!! Which is about what the United States government currently borrows every month. No sane person could willingly countenance brutally saving a month’s worth of debt over the course of a decade.
So now we have the latest cliffhanger: the Fiscal Cliff, below which lies a bottomless abyss of sequestration, tax-cut-extension expiries, Alternative Minimum Tax adjustments, new Obamacare taxes, the expiry of the deferment of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, as well as the expiry of the deferment of the implementation of the adjustment of the correction of the extension of the reduction to the proposed increase of the Alternative Minimum Growth Sustainability Reduction Rate. They don’t call it a yawning chasm for nothing.
As America hangs by its fingernails wiggling its toesies over the vertiginous plummet to oblivion, what can save her now? An Even More Super Committee? A bipartisan agreement in which Republicans agree to cave and Democrats agree not to laugh at them too much? That could be just the kind of farsighted reach-across-the-aisle compromise that rescues the nation until next week’s thrill-packed episode when America’s strapped into the driver’s seat of a runaway Chevy Volt careering round the hairpin bends on full charge, or trapped in an abandoned subdivision overrun by foreclosure zombies.
But….but…but…
AP says “Report: Extending jobless benefits creates jobs.”
http://www.boston.com/business/news/2012/11/29/report-extending-jobless-benefits-creates-jobs/IzAx17iu4jdZkQzJup55eK/story.html
…..keeping jobless benefits would cost the government $30 billion. But it would also lead to more spending by the unemployed, boosting demand for goods and services and creating new jobs….”
$30 billion.
For one year.
So….how many jobs?????
300,000 jobs.
COST/JOB????
$100,000.
Except…..
That 300,000 jobs number only applies to the fourth quarter of 2013!!
In fuzzy CBO math.
What about normal math?
For every $1,000,000 of unemployment benefits, we’ll get 6 jobs.
In other words:
$167,000 taxpayer money spent/1 job.
Geoff at Innocent Bystanders adds:
The humanitarian argument for extending unemployment benefits is fairly strong, but the economic stimulus argument is laughable.
I say: put a man on disability and remove him from the U3 and U6 rolls forever!
(That’s a joke, folks.)
Yeah, we’re going bankrupt, as a nation.
Obama is a master of the Cloward/Pivin philosophy.
He’s bringing us down of our own wight.
Discussion seems to have stalled because a number of republicans refuse to accept any tax hikes on the wealthiest 2 percent in the nation. Apparently more rational party members are having considerably difficulty wresting the wheel away from those who seem to be totally committed to some sort of GOP political suicide pact.
The Government borrows 188 million dollars every hour of every day all year long and this number is going to increase vary soon,over the cliff..ha! we’re already there.You want to fix this then give Obama everything he wants.You cant blame Obama for whats happening to the country,the responsibility is on those that vote for people like him.History teaches over and over again that until the system crashes and burns that people will not wake up…at this point we are faced with a populace that will not be educated into doing whats best for the themselves or their country.
Soon those in blue states with migrate to red states for opportunity and will infect those states will the same political views that drove the blue states into bankruptcy..we already see happening now.
The sooner it happens the less damage it will cause.
The Republicans should just leave the table an keep their mouth shut.Give the Left all the rope they want.
@Greg:
Because it is always tax now, cut later. Doesn’t matter, they are going to raise the rates on the top 2%. You’ll get you wish there Greg, we’ll punish the evil 2 percenters and their mega-money. Of course the very wealthy will still get off with no harm done. They don’t really have income, so their income taxes will not go up. Of course taxes on dividends will go up, cutting into money than many seniors use for their retirement.
There will be no cuts in spending. We’ll keep racking up debt and more debt. The economy will continue to sputter or even stall. But seriously, who cares. At least the evil 2 percenters will get whats coming to them. And that is all that matters.
@Aqua: No one, except the religious oriented, is calling anyone ‘evil’. We are just sayings the top 2% of the income earners are most able to pay the increase in tax—the proposed tax increase is not designed to ‘punish’ anyone.
@Aqua, #4:
Being in the upper 2 percent, they’ve apparently had no problem getting what’s coming to them thus far.
When deficits and accumulated debt have gotten so bad that serious austerity measures are going to be required to correct the problem, why do the richest feel that they should be exempt from making any sacrifice?
Republicans like to put all of the blame on democrats or on Obama, but the national debt has been rapidly piling up since the beginning of the Reagan administration, when the total was less than $1 trillion. Private wealth building has been facilitated by holding taxes down and paying for public goods and services with a credit card for over 30 years. It’s not as if the private sector hasn’t profited from all of that excess government spending. It’s not at all the case that this all happened exclusively on the democratic party’s watches, either.
@Liberal1 (Objectivity):
When you take something from someone and offer nothing in return, it is generally regarded as theft. Since we’re talking about the government and they can’t really be accused of theft, I believe we can, at the very least call it punishment.
Now we can certainly say that even the rich receive something in return from the federal government. We have roads, bridges, and national defense. But more than enough money is collected for these programs. I disagree with many republicans over defense spending. I think defense can certainly be cut. But of all the programs out there, this is the only one the federal government is actually responsible for.
The federal government needs to cut spending. They need to cut duplicitous and frivolous programs and departments. And the Senate needs to pass a budget
@Greg:
I agree. But you can go back way further than Reagan. There will be no “serious austerity measures” put in place. To tell you the truth, if they do this the right way they don’t even need to. We spend too much money on stupid stuff and not on the things we should. And both parties (and all those in between) are to blame.
I don’t know if anyone else saw Boehner on Fox News Sunday yesterday. He said we would deal with the country’s deficit problem. Chris Wallace asked him how, and he said we would. All appropriations must originate in the House of Representatives. If the Senate will not pass a budget, I think Boehner is going to cease with the continuing resolutions. And he can lay the blame squarely on Harry Reid.
@Liberal1 (Objectivity):
What’s the point? It will raise maybe 80 billion per year. When we borrow 4 billion per day. Just what is the increase on the wealthy supposed to accomplish?
The GOP should just give the President and EVERYONE WHO VOTED FOR HIM what they want….GOP should just walk away or as another commentor said… vote ‘present’ ..
What really really really makes me shake my head [slowly from side to side ] in dumbstruck disbelief is the arguments going back and forth…the lefts demonization of “Evil” Corporate America and the “evil” rich who need to pay their FAIR SHARE …
All the while, the biggest, the most incompetent, the MOST FRAUDULENT “Corporation” in America is sitting smack dab in the middle of Washington DC…. the President, the Comptroller, the Treasurer the subsidiaries the Administration and Administrators….
The saddest, most disappointing thing is that not one Congressman, Senator, on both sides, for many, many years, has had the conjones to just do what is BEST FOR THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE…they have done what IS IN THEIR OWN BEST SELFISH INTEREST and what is GOING TO GIVE THEM CONTINUED “POWER” ….
OFraud got re-elected this time…but not by way of integrity, honesty, character… imho I really do not see that in him…I know, and many Americans [if they are honest with themselves] also know he is dishonest, he surrounds himself with dishonesty, and it seems – is a compulsive liar… And, I know when I am being lied to, when I am being given a ‘con’ ….
Both sides of Congress and our Senators are no better… and yet, they ‘should’ be…
Ofraud got re-elected by offering and ‘giving goodies’ which we can barely afford, to Americans and non-Americans alike… The Producers are now out numbering the Slackers…and we can no longer afford to continue to be ‘giving’ America away….with subsidies for everyone and every corporation, and every country….
This has become the Raping of America and it has got to end and soon….
People, starting at the top of this “corporation” in Washington DC need to be knocked down a notch or two… and get real with Americas problems not ‘their’ problem of being and staying in power…
Unions like to “own” they are the “working America”… They have the nerve to claim they ‘own’ that they are the “only” working America….there is more non-Union working America than Unionized ….WE ARE NOT INVISIBLE, we deserve better than what we are getting [Robbed] by our Government…all of which, at this point is well out of our control…